Looking for the Polish Shakespeare – National Competition for Young Playwrights (Poland)
The Polish Centre of ASSITEJ is the main organizer of this Competition for Young Playwrights. It has a long-standing tradition and it has been organized every two years since 1984. The participants are children and young people aged between 12 and 21. Some of the plays by these young playwrights were published in 1997 in the book called Looking for the Polish Shakespeare. Others have appeared in the monthly “Dialog” and in foreign publications.
The names of some of the winners can be found among the authors of award-winning plays. The laureates of the competition take part in INTERPLAY – international drama workshops, which are a great challenge for young playwrights and an opportunity to develop and improve their skills. The Polish Centre of ASSITEJ regularly sends a national delegation to the bi-annual International INTERPLAY Festival in Australia and to the European edition of the workshops. [is interplay in Australia sort of on hiatus?]
The XIIIth edition of the Competition finished in 2010. First place in the 12-15 age ranges was Kacper Furmaniak, and in 16-21 age range : Joanna Tyszka and Karolina Sarniewicz.
The prize ceremony was held during the Korczak 2010 Festival in October 2010.
Young Translators
Young Translators is an annual project first held in 2004, for young people aged 16 to 21, who live permanently abroad, speak both fluent Polish and the language of the country they live in. The main objective of the project is to create at the Polish Centre of ASSITEJ in Warsaw a group of young translators of Polish literature, who come from the Polish emigrant circles and who, in the future, will be the promoters and translators of Polish contemporary plays, poetry and literature. Another objective is to establish a long-term artistic cooperation with a young generation of Poles living in different countries, especially in the European Union and Eastern Europe. The jury for the contest is made up of well-known translators of Polish and foreign literature, writers and theatre artists, and the head of the jury is Maciej Wojtyszko. In 2006 there appeared the first publication about the competition, “Young Translators”.
In 2010 the VIIth edition of the contest was celebrated under the auspices of Minister of Foreign Affairs Rados?aw Sikorski, Minister of National Education Katarzyna Hall and Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Bogdan Zdrojewski.
Young Translators – a publication
At the end of 2006 the Polish Centre of ASSITEJ published “Young Translators”, a book summing up the first three years of the Competition. The book includes names of the participants and short profiles of those especially committed to the task. It also contains their translations of literature – excerpts of Polish literature translated into the language of the country of their residence and the literature of those countries translated into Polish. Languages represented in the publication are: Byelorussian, Bulgarian, Spanish, Dutch, Lithuanian, German and Italian. The introduction and most important information have also been translated into English.